1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of office supplies. The invention relates more specifically to hole punches with the additional feature of automatically installing a reinforcement ring around each punched hole concurrently with the creation of the hole.
2. Background Art
Mechanical hole punches have been a standard office supply accessory for many years. Handle-operated, plunger type, two and three hole punches are especially useful office implements for creating hard copy paper files using ACCO fasteners and loose-leaf notebooks. Historically, the holes made in paper or card-stock sheets have been strengthened with a thin, glue-coated reinforcement ring positioned coaxially around the punched hole perimeter. However, reinforcement rings are typically purchased separately in matchbox style packages and require intense manual effort to install. Each such reinforcement ring must first be wetted to activate the glue and then applied one by one to each previously punched hole including carefully aligning the ring hole with the punched hole before pressing the ring into contact with the sheet with sufficient care to avoid folding or otherwise distorting the ring. Those rings that are improperly placed or inadvertently distorted or misshaped, often must be removed and replaced with another ring. Thus, the application of such reinforcement rings is a highly inefficient and often messy and time-consuming process.
Therefore, there is an ongoing need for a way to obviate the conventional reinforcement ring installation process which suffers from the aforementioned deficiencies.